Valerie Wong
the law of attraction

nothing about beauty is objective; grace resides in the particular. from the soul-stirring perfume of arabian jasmine to a sky streaked with raspberry sorbet. the ocean sings to me in a key perfectly attuned to my ear. there is nothing secular about love: a poem’s beating heart, shattering crisp of the last black sesame kouign amann. the spell cast by salt-kissed skin, sun gathered in the crease that bisects your back. a glowing sight which quieted my distemper.

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a non-micro aggression

thought you could “scare the shit out of me.” thought i would burst into tears, that i would “go back to where i came from.” my face an affront to your being. my being, in your deranged eyes, a virus. charging down broadway in an open bathrobe, fellow person of colour. you don’t know the mountains of shit i’ve eaten. unlike you, i earned my place in this country. swam in darkness for seven years. almost drowned in a flooded cave. so now the danger of walking around an unsupervised woman? bounces right off my hardened shell. you try to swallow me and i’ll stick to your throat. if you don’t choke, i’ll come back up like heartburn, eating through your insides. you burn me and i’ll rise from the fucking stake.